training

The biggest trend in today’s economy is finding ways to save money in organizational training budgets. Smart companies know that if they cut training during tough economic times, you do more harm than good. While in the short term you may be cutting costs, it comes at the expense of your employees in the long term, leaving them unprepared when the economy takes and upturn. continue reading...

Workforce training and performance professionals understand that in a declining market (well, in any market) businesses are faced with ongoing change. To remain competitive, companies must invest in continual improvement and workforce training to make sure their employees are working at their best. continue reading...

On Twitter I recently shared a resource of more than 25 free e-learning books available for download. One e-book in particular caught my attention, and I thought it would be interesting to write a review for this blog. continue reading...

A recent “Tweet” on my Twitter account of a blog post I found generated a lot of traffic and discussion around whether or not the field of instructional design is suffering due to the popularity of rapid e-learning applications like Adobe Captivate or Articulate’s Engage and Presenter. continue reading...

We’re not out of the woods yet. The economic outlook for the foreseeable future in our country shows businesses will continue to cut costs and make tough choices in order to survive and stay competitive. While the belt tightening continues so too will the temptation to cut training budgets or eliminate them all together. continue reading...

At some point in our adult lives we have all sat through boring training or felt overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown at us. When we feel this way, is usually due to cognitive overload. continue reading...

Any time you can distribute your learning online you have the potential to reach more learners and reduce your costs dramatically. This is especially true in instructor-led training versus e-learning (self-paced or synchronous).

Building any kind of training comes with fixed and variable costs. Producing training materials and the development of the actual course itself is a fixed, one-time cost. It’s not until you release the training to the learners when you encounter variable costs that change based on need. continue reading...

I recently read an interesting blog post from a company who is well-versed in converting instructor-led training, usually consisting of a series of PowerPoint slides, to e-learning. The issues they lament are the same ones I have encountered when faced with this task, but I think we have different philosophies and take different approaches when tasked to move instructor-led training to an online environment. continue reading...

A job-task analysis is a method for breaking down a job or process into key elements in order to identify what a learner must know or do in order to successfully perform.

Training developers perform a task analysis to do one or more of the following: continue reading...

I enjoy when I have conversations with other business professionals about training, I come up with new ways to illustrate its purpose in a business setting and hopefully paint a clear picture for them on how training can improve performance throughout their organization.  Recently, I was speaking with a business owner about training and explained it to him in the following manner. continue reading...